HOUSTON – Philip Lee knew he was a victim the second he stepped inside his apartment.
"I was sick," said Lee. "I look and see that it was gone."
Lee's apartment had been burglarized. The security cameras he installed showed thieves taking off with his TVs, a video game system, a watch, cellphone, clothes, a jar full of change and his gun.
"I was depressed, very stressed out," said Lee.
Lee thought he caught a break. Even though the thieves also stole his security cameras, they left the hard drive that captured their images. Lee caught a glimpse of one of the burglars and then spotted that man in the parking lot of his apartment complex. Lee immediately dialed 911.
"So I'm thinking, 'OK, well 911 is on the way, we have this guy in sight,'" said Lee.
Lee said he kept an eye on the crook as seconds, then minutes slipped away without an officer showing up at the complex.
"We waited and we waited and we waited," said Lee. "I got a call back from dispatch saying they were in the middle of shift change."
An officer showed up at Lee's complex four hours after his initial call. The thief got away.
"Very frustrating, very frustrating," said Lee.
After hearing Lee's story, Local 2 Investigates wanted know how quickly Houston police are responding to calls for help. We analyzed three years of response times, broken down by police beat and priority.
Police are supposed to respond to Priority 1, potentially life-threatening calls, in under six minutes. Local 2 Investigates found 12 beats where it's taking longer. An area just outside the West Loop at I-10 is waiting close to nine minutes. Neighborhoods around Lake Houston are waiting 11½ minutes. An HPD report recently presented to City Council members shows the department is meeting its six-minute goal 72.8 percent of the time.
View: HPD Response Times
Priority 2 calls involve crimes that just happened, like robberies and sexual assaults. HPD is supposed to respond in 10 minutes. Local 2 Investigates discovered 26 beats waiting longer. Several neighborhoods off Highway 290 right at the Loop are waiting more than 11 minutes. HPD's report to council shows the department meeting this goal 80 percent of the time.
"It's not because the officer is not trying to get there, it's simply because we don't have the manpower to get these numbers down," said Ray Hunt, president of the Houston Police Officers' Union.
Hunt said HPD's staffing is at a crisis point. Houston keeps growing, but HPD staffing has stayed the same. Every year, a 5,300-person department struggles to answer more than 1 million calls for help.
"It's not uncommon for a beat in Houston, Texas, to have one officer assigned to that beat on some shifts," said Hunt. "It's also not uncommon, sometimes, for there to be nobody in that beat and the adjacent beats have to handle that beat."
View: HPD Beat Map
These numbers also show officers themselves waiting for help. HPD's report shows out of the calls where a two-officer response is needed, the department is only able to send two officers 54.1 percent of the time.
Hunt maintains that while HPD does get budget increases, it's not enough to increase the size of the force.
"The city has grown in size, benefits have increased, health care costs have gone up, we still have the same number of police officers that we had 10 years ago," said Hunt.
This issue was raised at City Council's public safety committee. HPD leaders proposed adding 1,200 officers over the next several years. Former Houston police chief and councilman C.O. Bradford said more money needs to be devoted to HPD.
"The current chief today has fewer officers than I had 10 years ago as police chief," said Bradford.
Councilman Michael Kubosh agrees more money needs to go HPD. The city can do that through a voter-approved public safety fee or by cutting other things in the budget.
"Sure, they want parks, but they want to feel safe in their parks," said Kubosh.
However, a lack of manpower may not fully explain some slow police responses. Remember Lee and his four-hour wait?
"That's unacceptable, its unacceptable because it was probably coded wrong," said Hunt.
Hunt believes whoever took Lee's call gave it a lower priority then it deserved. Local 2 requested a copy of Lee's 911 call, but HPD refused to release the recording. The city claimed Lee's call was still part of an active investigation.
HPD officials said Lee's call was initially coded as Priority 4, which is a report of a serious crime but not an emergency. HPD officials said Lee's call was eventually upgraded to a Priority 3, which is categorized as a "life-threatening delayed report, property crime just occurred." HPD officials had no specifics as to why Lee's call was given these priorities even though he reported the suspected thief was still on property.
However, HPD's goal for responding to even Priority 3 and 4 calls is between 18-23 minutes.
"Short-staffed or not, somebody should have responded a lot faster," said Lee.
Officials with HPD declined Local 2's request to discuss these response times on-camera. We received a written statement, "The Houston Police Department responds to more than one million calls for service per year. Those calls are prioritized by the information provided by the reportee to the call taker. The call is then sent to HPD dispatch, who in turn dispatches an officer to the location. While there are, at times, factors that affect response times, (traffic delays, shift change, etc.), approximately 70 percent of all Priority 1 calls for service are responded to within six minutes or less."